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Why I Work on Ads

jefftk.com

401–410 of 882 posts

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#401
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't read emails for ad targeting.

Is this a new policy? As far as I know Google employs algorithms and bots of different sorts to read emails to identify topics and then use it for ad targeting. I.e if I send you an email talking about finding a vacation deal to go to Egypt, we will get ads to that effect (obviously it'll vary somewhat).

Not really new, they changed that policy in 2017 based on some news headlines I see on the topic.

Official documentation:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en#:~:text=Th....

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#402
post #357

The crux of his justification for what he does is that, he argues, people wouldn't want to pay a monthly fee for services like youtube bundled with complete respect for their privacy. First, users do not currently have that choice. Sure, you can pay for some things (e.g. youtube premium), but it does nothing for your privacy. If you buy youtube premium you'll very likely see more ads for youtube premium (if you're no…

> If a user paid a "Premium Internet" monthly fee, Google Ads could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off

That would be horrible! Data collection and sharing should be off by default, and I never want to see a "Premium Internet" experience.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#403
post #357

The crux of his justification for what he does is that, he argues, people wouldn't want to pay a monthly fee for services like youtube bundled with complete respect for their privacy. First, users do not currently have that choice. Sure, you can pay for some things (e.g. youtube premium), but it does nothing for your privacy. If you buy youtube premium you'll very likely see more ads for youtube premium (if you're no…

> First, users do not currently have that choice.

Have you thought about the possibility that there actually was a choice and it just miserably failed. Or we can call it a "natural selection". One example would be https://contributor.google.com/, which never has gained enough traction since publishers don't like it. This is simply a hard problem. You can build another big tech if you can provide a meaningful, scalable alternative.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#404
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's literally all you have to say on the subject Not at all! First I talk about the economic benefit of targeted ads ("Most products are a much better fit for some people than others..."), then how it works today ("Historically, ads like this have been built on top of third-party cookies..."), then how it can work without cross-site tracking ("build browser APIs that will allow this kind of well-targeted adverti…

Sorry, that's still attempting to justify the unjustifiable. The only ethical way of targeting is content relevance, which allows inference of the audience interest without using any audience data other than what they're currently looking at.

> The only ethical way of targeting is content relevance

Why?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#405
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, in the past about 99.999999 percent of the time ads never interested me. I think I might have clicked one in a decade. Recently, just from my youtube subscriptions I think, my youtube ads have been surprisingly relevant, for things like cnc routers or various embedded tools or what not -- ads that are actually for things I might be interested in buying. (Granted there's still a ton of obnoxious get rich q…

Everyone ignores the elephant in the room. Just let the users set their own advertising profiles! Always relevant ads, no tracking needed.

But you don't need to run a giant spying system to make that happen, so the companies whose moat is their giant spying system don't want to even try that. They also happen to have all the users/eyeballs (they need them for their spying system, in addition to serving ads to them). So it's hard for anyone else to try it to see how well it works.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#406
post #238
post #29

The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I will offer a contrarian opinion as a user whose salary does not depend on advertising: the advertising model for using Google search and watching Youtube videos works better for me as a consumer . The alternati…

The problem is that ads are not free. It's paid. And it's paid by you. When you say "I'm using Google for free because it's supported by ads", what it means is: - some companies are buying (expensive) ads on Google - they are therefore increasing their marketing budget - which mechanically increases the price of their services and products - which you ultimately have to pay so no, the "free ads" are not free for the…

Your line of argument rests on the assumption that buying ads has no positive effect on sales.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#407
post #196

I'm always surprised that someone would go through the trouble of justifying their involvement in something prima facie unethical -- in writing, no less -- and fail to address the actual ethical issue. As other have noted in comments, the problem is not with advertising in general, but with the specific way in which Google advertises. I have a hard time believing the author is unaware of this, so I'm left wondering:…

> fail to address the actual ethical issue Could you be more specific about what you think the ethical issue is? I've seen many comments describing very different ethical objections, from several perspectives, and I'm not sure which one is yours?

Spying on users. Running code they didn’t ask for on their computers to spy on them.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#408

I'm always surprised that someone would go through the trouble of justifying their involvement in something prima facie unethical -- in writing, no less -- and fail to address the actual ethical issue. As other have noted in comments, the problem is not with advertising in general, but with the specific way in which Google advertises. I have a hard time believing the author is unaware of this, so I'm left wondering:…

> something prima facie unethical

Citation needed.

You're criticizing the author for not addressing the "actual ethical issue", yet you yourself are failing to even state what you think it is.

There is absolutely zero societal consensus that advertising is unethical, in the way there is a consensus that fraud or murder are.

To the contrary -- there is vast disagreement around the ethics of online advertising, delicately balancing concerns around societal good, access to information, funding, factuality, bias, tracking, privacy, and consent. The incredible complexity of the issues involved is pretty much proof that there is nothing merely "prima facie" at all.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#409
post #200
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it interesting that the first thing he says to defend his work with ads is that he gives money to charity. If you feel like you need to donate to charity to justify your actions, maybe your actions are evil? There has to be some level of guilt involved in that decision, at the very least. Which is to say, I don't blame him for what he does. If someone dangled all that money in my face I can't say I wouldn't b…

> the first thing he says to defend his work with ads is that he gives money to charity The reason that I work (as opposed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement ) is so I can donate, which is why I start with that piece of the explanation.

I don't mean to come across as too forward or rude, and freely admit that I know nothing about you personally. Thank you for making such generous contributions to charity!

The way I look at it is like so:

I think most people want to bring a net positive value to society. One way of doing that is working on something whose intrinsic value to society is neutral or nebulous (or just not thinking about it too hard), and compensating for that giving the money we make to other organizations that are definitely contributing positively. While this is better than not doing so, I think it misses out on the leverage that exists in what we build vs. the money we're paid for it.

For example, despite making over $500k last year, we know your employer thinks you are producing more value than that, because otherwise they wouldn't pay you that much. You would be a drag on their income statement otherwise. What this means is that even if you donated 100% of your salary to charity, you still aren't taking advantage of the leverage of what you can build, vs. the fixed amount you can earn.

If instead, you choose to work on something which is inherently good for society, society at large benefits from that leverage. You might be paid less, say $200k instead of $500k. But since the positive value you produce is leveraged you could be contributing, let's say, $1M of positive value for society - $200k to pay you to live in the bay area ($800k net positive value).

Just something to think about.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I don't think that's why people are downvoting. Speaking for myself, it's because his analysis focuses only on the benefits of ads, and conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems ( e.g. large-scale collect…

In the span of just a few comments in the thread below, I've seen people claim that the ethical problem is: 1. All ads in general. 2. Targeted advertisement, regardless of the privacy implications. 3. Data collection for targeted advertisement. 4. Data collection for anything. 5. Whether or not users consent to all of the above. So I don't really think it is fair for anybody to insist that there is a single agreed up…

I don't know if it was mentioned here but another issue that many people have with Google specifically is it's perceived monopoly position and market power.
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